Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

Preschool Rating Scales

2008-03-31
Quick delivery. This item is used to measure the quality of our preschool early education programs.

Ask first

2008-02-23
I got this book for Intro to Early Ed class. After I got it the instructor said we can share a book. Find out if you can share it first. We have not used it yet but we are only in our 4th week of a 16 week class. The book is not that expensive.

A Flawed, But Useful Instrument

2005-10-23
I underwent ECERS-R evaluation using this same instrument when I worked in a poor, predominantly Black elementary school. I have concluded that this instrument, though thorough and insightful, somewhat downwardly grades poverty-stricken classrooms by pointing out what they don't have (and often can't get due to financial constraints). On the other hand, it rewards more affluent school districts due to their ability to supply more materials, resources, and equipment.

Even though I find it easy to follow, it allows way too much subjectivity for the assessing agent. How you rate my DISCIPLINE and STAFF-CHILD INTERACTIONS would depend on your experiences as a teacher in a certain cultural context. An assessor who mastered his classroom managing skills under the guise of a school district in a community devoted to authoritative discpline may misinterpret the cues in an authoritarian-dominated classroom as "inappropriate". In reality, appropriateness and inappropriateness depend on one's cultural context even with buttressing empircal research. For some people, authoritative classroom management allows children to "run wild", "control the classroom", and "do what they want to do too much".

To ensure the proper use of the instrument, administrators should:

1. Ensure that his teachers possess a copy of the ALL ABOUT THE ECERS-R companion book which details step-by-step how to put together an ECERS-R classroom.

2. BEFORE the official assessment, direct teachers to do an ACCURATE, well-guided, appropriately-paced self-study of their classroom.

3. BEFORE the official assessment, support the teacher's suggestions and requests to pull their classrooms up to ECERS-R standards.

4. BEFORE the official assessment, stay mindful of the things that a teacher can control and which things the principal can only control.

5. AFTER the official assessment, support the teacher's need to fix deficiencies.

6. AFTER the official assessment, make a concerted effort to fix the deficiencies that stand out of the teacher's hands.

In the end, all early childhood professionals should realize that a developmentally appropriate classroom doesn't begin and end with the ECERS-R despite its well-earned reputation.

Please use proper, realistic discernment.

A must have for any preschool environment

2000-04-15
This book helps truly look at your program and how it meets the needs of the children in your program. It gives a standard that we should all hold to when caring for young children.